Letters after your name

[kegmcnabb]

I'm not arguing against folks going out and getting and education, accompanied by bits of paper or not. I do, howver, find it maddening when someone uses his degree as a way of squelching debate or putting on an air of superiority.

Well, that is something quite seperate from being educated (or not). It's called being an *sshole and *ssholes come in all shapes, sizes, and degrees of edu-ma-cation. But I would agree...that particular rectal manifestation is most annoying!

Craig McClelland OES

[windshieldbug]

I can't believe you people don't have anything better to do with your lives than complain about this!

_________________
Michael Keller SOB BATP TADD UMSW

[MaryAnn]

P.S. So after not playing for 10 years I get back into playing and join the local community band. There is one other tuba player. We hit it off and only discover a few months later that we are both Ph.D. physicists. What are the odds? How many Ph.D. physicists play the tuba? "Probably too many" Chuck and Bloke are thinking...

Here's another one: in our four-horn section in one of two community orchestras in town, two of us are female electrical engineers. I don't know if the statistical likelihoods are the same, but it seems in the same ballpark. We don't seem to have as much in common as you Fud Fysicists though...she likes beer and horse racing, and I like carrot juice and meditation.

On the Forbes thing, universities don't offer degrees, much less advanced degrees, in entrepeneurship. Those guys saw they weren't headed where they wanted to go, and they split and went there.

MA

[Lew]

The education system in India in many ways is stronger than ours, so the programmers I have been hiring there typically have stronger academic backgrounds than many of the US based people. Some of them don't have as much experience, but I find that they pick up things very quickly and have been delivering high quality work.

whoops! I'm not sure, but on this one point you may have accidentally stepped into my argument...' just a bit more than "pure economics".

I thought that your argument was that education doesn't matter, but in this case the point is that the people I am hiring in India can compete because they have at least the equivalent education of the people I would be hiring here. This is an example where education does matter.

[Chuck(G)]

A third of the productivity if you're lucky. Then you have to pay someone on this side to sort though the mess they've created (been there, done that...). Some automotive engineering firms have now decided that it costs the same or MORE to send work to India as to have it done here, but they loose tax benifits if they don't.

And you always have the worry of the "Intellectual property laws? We don't need no stinking intellectual property laws!" problem.

OTOH, I've heard that some UK call centers offer some of their domestic employees a salary reduction (by about half) to move to Bangalore and take supervisory posts. If you don't mind living in a different culture, with different weather, population density and social customs, you can actually live quite nicely on half a typical UK salary.

(climbing on soapbox)Which points up why the basic premise behind globalization (that all units of labor are interchangeable and that the global economy will result in some sort of equilibrium that we'll all be thankful for) is full of cheese. Because of climate, terrain, population distribution, infrastructure etc. it will never be as cheap to live in Duluth as in Mumbai. Do away with all social spending, slash the armed forces and do away with all subsidies, cut taxes to near zero, and it will still cost substantially more to live in Duluth.
(climbing off of soapbox)

[ThomasDodd]

I can hire an Indian programmer in Chennai to do for $20/hr, what I have to pay a US based person $80/hr to do.

But you're really spending $100/hr or more toemploy that person in the States. His pay check might say $80/hr, then add what you spend on benifits and employment taxes (FICA, unemployment)

A third of the productivity if you're lucky. Then you have to pay someone on this side to sort though the mess they've created (been there, done that...).

I can show you a lot of U.S. based "programmers" that you would have the same problems with. There are good and bad people all over the world. The trick is finding the good ones wherever yopu are looking.

Some automotive engineering firms have now decided that it costs the same or MORE to send work to India as to have it done here, but they loose tax benifits if they don't.

What a crock. What "benifits"? That like saying I would loose "tax benifits" if I mover to CA instead of staying in MS (MS income tax is 5% max). Finding a way to pay lower taxes is not getting a benifit, it just geting the best deal you can out of a broken system.

BTW, those"benifits" apply to London, Frankfurt, and Paris the same as they do in Dubai or Seoul.

The only jobs left will be at Wal-Mart. I call dibs on the greeter gig...

Immigration has joined the long list of subjects on which it is taboo to talk sense in plain English. At the heart of much confusion about immigration is the notion that we ’need’ immigrants—legal or illegal—to do work that Americans won’t do. What we ’need’ depends on what it costs and what we are willing to pay. If I were a billionaire, I might ’need’ my own private jet. But I can remember a time when my family didn’t even ’need’ electricity. Leaving prices out of the picture is probably the source of more fallacies in economics than any other single misconception. At current wages for lowlevel jobs and current levels of welfare, there are indeed many jobs that Americans will not take. The fact that immigrants—and especially illegal immigrants—will take those
jobs is the very reason the wage levels will not rise enough to attract Americans. This is
not rocket science. It is elementary supply and demand. Yet we continue to hear about
the ’need’ for immigrants to do jobs that Americans will not do—even though these
are all jobs that Americans have done for generations before mass illegal immigration
became a way of life.

A similar argument applies to foreign jobs. If a lower cost way exists, it will be used by a business if they wish to stay in business. If it's not less expensive, then it won't be used. In many cases, experiment with forigne employment have not been cheaper, and thus are no longer used. Like customer support call centers. The loss of business due to poor support is bringing the call centers back o the States.

[ThomasDodd]

(climbing on soapbox)Which points up why the basic premise behind globalization (that all units of labor are interchangeable and that the global economy will result in some sort of equilibrium that we'll all be thankful for) is full of cheese. Because of climate, terrain, population distribution, infrastructure etc. it will never be as cheap to live in Duluth as in Mumbai. Do away with all social spending, slash the armed forces and do away with all subsidies, cut taxes to near zero, and it will still cost substantially more to live in Duluth.
(climbing off of soapbox)

Until Mubai catches up with Duluth. It will take a long time becaues of the population density, but in 75-100 years I expect India, Taiwan, and S. Korea to have about the same real wages as the U.S. Technology makes it easier for employies to be located in seprate locations. Now that is little difference in me working with someone in CA, NH, London, or India. The only issue is time differentials. Those can be worked around.

Once enough people in India are making higer wages, the rest of the economy will follow suit (that "trickle down" concept fom the 80's). The population will egualize, and possibly decline too, as higher earning people tend to have fewer childern. (The U.S. and wester europe don't maint tain replacemet rates if immigrants, and their children, are not counted. The immigrants from poor countries still have the large family mindset) It will happnen. When is the question.

[windshieldbug]

I've heard that some UK call centers offer some of their domestic employees a salary reduction (by about half) to move to Bangalore and take supervisory posts. If you don't mind living in a different culture, with different weather, population density and social customs, you can actually live quite nicely on half a typical UK salary.

Didn't they try this in the UK once before? (sun never sets and all that rot... )

_________________
S. OmePiker SOB BATP TADD UMSW

[Chuck(G)]

Until Mubai catches up with Duluth. It will take a long time becaues of the population density, but in 75-100 years I expect India, Taiwan, and S. Korea to have about the same real wages as the U.S. Technology makes it easier for employies to be located in seprate locations. Now that is little difference in me working with someone in CA, NH, London, or India. The only issue is time differentials. Those can be worked around.

...and let's see--if someone in Duluth is paid exactly as much as the same person in Mumbai, who's going to have a higher standard of living?

Let's see--the winters in Duluth are brutal--Mumbai has no winter in the sense that we think of it. India has a fairly well-developed public transportation system, where the US does not. The growing season in Duluth is perhaps about one-half at best of the gowing season around Mumbai, so food's quite a bit more expensive. In short, if you live in Mumbai, you will enjoy a much higher standard of living on the same wage than if you live in Duluth. It cannot be otherwise, no matter how the forces of globalization operate.

Because it's cheaper to live in Mumbai, Duluth will simply be placed out of the competition and Mumbai will continue the downward pressure on wages by competing with the likes of Hanoi....

[Chuck(G)]

Didn't they try this in the UK once before? (sun never sets and all that rot... )

Yeah, but it can be a very mixed bag. I almost accepted a job offer back in the 70's to work in Tehran.

[ThomasDodd]

...and let's see--if someone in Duluth is paid exactly as much as the same person in Mumbai, who's going to have a higher standard of living?

Not sure about higher, just different. Again, that once the overall standard has risen.

The money I make here in MS would go a lot further in the small TN town I grew up in. And it'd be quite low in CA or a city like Dallas, New Yor, or D.C.

But, while I have access to a lot that I didn't have in TN, the city would offer even more. Like here there are a few good resturants, and a decnt movie theater, neither of which were within 90 minutes back in TN. But I still need to travel to find a symphony, art gallery, or 5 start meal.

[Joe Baker]

Until Mubai catches up with Duluth. It will take a long time becaues of the population density, but in 75-100 years I expect India, Taiwan, and S. Korea to have about the same real wages as the U.S. Technology makes it easier for employies to be located in seprate locations. Now that is little difference in me working with someone in CA, NH, London, or India. The only issue is time differentials. Those can be worked around.

...and let's see--if someone in Duluth is paid exactly as much as the same person in Mumbai, who's going to have a higher standard of living?

Let's see--the winters in Duluth are brutal--Mumbai has no winter in the sense that we think of it. India has a fairly well-developed public transportation system, where the US does not. The growing season in Duluth is perhaps about one-half at best of the gowing season around Mumbai, so food's quite a bit more expensive. In short, if you live in Mumbai, you will enjoy a much higher standard of living on the same wage than if you live in Duluth. It cannot be otherwise, no matter how the forces of globalization operate.

Because it's cheaper to live in Mumbai, Duluth will simply be placed out of the competition and Mumbai will continue the downward pressure on wages by competing with the likes of Hanoi....

Remember, cost/desirability of living will ALSO normalize in the long run, providing a much wider variety of tradeoffs between comfort, beauty, safety and price; but market forces will prevent any one place from being objectively superior in all four metrics. Some people will choose, for reasons of their own, to live in more expensive places; others will choose less expensive places -- just as they do now in the US. I don't know where the least expensive place to live in the U.S. is, but someplace must have that distinction. So why don't we all flock to that place? Why do millions still live in NY City, LA, Chicago, Boston -- places that are MUCH more expensive, and (to MY tastes anyway) not nearly as nice as most small country towns? Because there's something there they want more than they want a low cost of living. For reasons of family heritage, community, culture, etc., people will continue to live and work in Duluth, too -- even if a "higher standard of living" could be bought with the same paycheck elsewhere.
___________________________________
Joe Baker, who had to look up "Mumbai" to learn that it is the post-imperial spelling of "Bombay".

[Chuck(G)]

[But, while I have access to a lot that I didn't have in TN, the city would offer even more. Like here there are a few good resturants, and a decnt movie theater, neither of which were within 90 minutes back in TN. But I still need to travel to find a symphony, art gallery, or 5 start meal.

Boy, this one's going OT and perilously close to politics.

But in a global ecomony, the race is to the bottom--produce your product for the lowest possible cost because (at least in theory) everyone in world is a potential competitor. That's why Perdue sets up their chicken-plucking plants in rural South Carolina and not in the Hamptons. They can pay less and their fixed costs are lower. If they could set up a viable operation in Guatemala, I'm sure they would.

The biggest danger of this is not loss of employment, but rather capital flight. Investment goes where it makes money. Right now, we're seeing a bunch of money that might otherwise have gone toward a domestic startup instead heading to East Asia because the market potential is bigger.

[ThomasDodd]

Boy, this one's going OT and perilously close to politics.

Well, we do have a habbit of that don't we. (we being about 10-15 members with lot's of posts)

The biggest danger of this is not loss of employment, but rather capital flight. Investment goes where it makes money. Right now, we're seeing a bunch of money that might otherwise have gone toward a domestic startup instead heading to East Asia because the market potential is bigger.

Bringing it back on topc, a bit.

The people making those decisions tend to have(and use) lots of letters after their name, and little (no?) experience with a startup, or plucking chickens.

[Lew]

I can hire an Indian programmer in Chennai to do for $20/hr, what I have to pay a US based person $80/hr to do.

But you're really spending $100/hr or more toemploy that person in the States. His pay check might say $80/hr, then add what you spend on benifits and employment taxes (FICA, unemployment). ...

To be clear I was comparing a consultant/contractor in the US vs. one in India. My average technical empoyee is paid around $40/hr, plus bonuses, benefits, and other costs that probably bring the real cost to around the same $80/hr.